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All this while the little girl was ravenously devouring a bit of bread, and carefully watching Colomba and her brother, turn about, trying to read the meaning of what they were saying in their eyes. "And what has this bandit of yours done? What crime has driven him into the maquis?" "Brandolaccio has not committed any crime," exclaimed Colomba.
A dog ran out of the maquis, and when the girl called out "Brusco!" it approached at once, and fawned upon them. Presently two bearded men appeared, with guns under their arms, cartridge-belts round their waists, and pistols hanging at their sides. Their torn and patched garments contrasted oddly with their weapons, which were brilliantly polished, and came from a famous Continental factory.
Why was he drawn by preference to this village of Sérignan? for he did not go thither without making some inquiries as to the possibility of obtaining shelter elsewhere, and the Carpentras cemetery had tempted him also; but what had particularly seduced and drawn him thither was the nearness of the mountain with its Mediterranean flora, so rich that it recalled the Corsican maquis; full of beautiful fungi and varied insects, where, under the flat stones exposed to the burning sun, the centipede burrowed and the scorpion slept; where a special fauna abounded of curious dung-beetles, scarabaei, the Copris, the Minotaur, etc. which only a little farther north grow rapidly scarcer and then altogether disappear.
I couldn't come sooner because he was late. I waited for him in the maquis for three hours." "And you've had no supper?" "Why no, signorina! I've not had time." "You shall have some supper here. Has your uncle any bread left?" "Very little, signorina. But what he is most short of is powder. Now the chestnuts are in, the only other thing he wants is powder."
I would willingly have employed a couple to clean up the little inn at which we stayed for the night. It would have been a public service. In the morning my friend and I started on a little walk to a village higher in the hills called Renno. We went up a good open road, cut here and there through le maquis, the scrub or bush of Corsica.
Fully expecting a second volley, Orso moved a few steps, to place himself behind one of the burned trees that still stood upright in the maquis. Thus sheltered, he put his gun between his knees, and hurriedly reloaded it. Meanwhile his left arm began to hurt him horribly, and felt as if it were being dragged down by a huge weight. What had become of his adversaries? He could not understand.
"She says the Lucchesi she hired to clear the maquis are asking her five-and-thirty sous, and chestnuts as well because of the fever in the lower parts of Pietranera." "The lazy scamps! . . . I'll see to them! . . . Will you share our dinner, monsieur, without any ceremony? We've eaten worse meals together, in the days of that poor compatriot of ours, whom they have discharged from the army."
And so, in the end, I am sent to teach physics and chemistry at Ajaccio College. This time, the temptation is too much for me. The sea, with its wonders, the beach, whereon the tide casts such beautiful shells, the maquis of myrtles, arbutus and mastic trees: all this paradise of gorgeous nature has too much on its side in the struggle with the sine and the cosine. I succumb.
On the other side of the straits she saw, from morning until night, a little white speck on the coast. It was the little Sardinian village Longosardo, where Corsican criminals take refuge when they are too closely pursued. They compose almost the entire population of this hamlet, opposite their native island, awaiting the time to return, to go back to the "maquis."
How he longed to share his enthusiasm with his father or his brother, as he rambled through the neighbouring maquis!
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